I was moved by these books:
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Still Alice, where the narrator, who is suffering from early-onset dementia, decides that further along in her decline, she wants to kill herself, and she tries to design a foolproof system to regularly test her cognitive abilities and orchestrate the suicide. Especially intriguing was the narrator's knowledge that she would eventually lose the agency to end her own life.
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Two Arms And a Head, where the author, who recently became a paraplegic, extensively thinks about what he needs for his life to be worth living, and ultimately decides to kill himself.
I'm interested philosophically in questions like: When a life is worth living? When, if ever, is suicide rational? What does it mean to lose the agency to end one's own life (e.g., due to mental or physical limitations)?
Please suggest novels that grapple with these issues.
by half_pass
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A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby.
A play:
‘Night, mother by Marsha Norman.
“All the Futures that Never Happened” has a brutal s**cide chapter. It’s a quick read but a real gut punch.
I would be interested in a book that could hold the dialectic of believing in the right to die with dignity while also seeing the merit and necessity of working toward suicide prevention. I find myself in this intersection, researching suicide causes and prevention in populations while also believing that people have the right to end their own life rationally after a terminal or degenerative condition is diagnosed. I’m a crisis worker who has helped many, many suicidal people and known many people with conditions that caused them unnecessary anguish right until the end. It is so complex. I think about these things too.